Ignatius Sancho: African Man of Letters

Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780) was said to have been born a slave on a ship crossing the Atlantic from Africa to the West Indies. Although this is now thought to be unlikely, his origins were African while his earliest memories were of Greenwich, near London, where he was forced to work as a child slave. He persuaded the powerful Montagu family to employ him as their butler, before retiring to run a grocery shop in Westminster. He composed music, appeared on the stage, and entertained many famous figures of literary and artistic London. The first African we know of to vote in a British election, he wrote a large number of letters which were collected and published in 1782, two years after his death. He was thought of in his age as "the extraordinary Negro", and to eighteenth-century opponents of the slave trade he became a symbol of the humanity of Africans. In recent years there has been a great deal of interest in the life and works of Ignatius Sancho. This website aims to reflect the work being done by Sancho scholars around the world. To find out more, follow the links opposite the detail of Thomas Gainsborough's portrait of Sancho, painted in Bath in 1768.

The illustrations on this page are all the visual records we have left of Ignatius Sancho. At the top of the page is a detail from his trade card. A native American sits under a hogshead smoking a pipe while an African, almost certainly a slave, gathers sugar cane. In the middle of the page is a detail of Thomas Gainsborough's portrait of Sancho, painted in Bath in 1768. Opposite is a detail of the reverse of the trade card showing a native American doing business with a French trader (treading on the royal Fleur de Lys) and bearing Sancho's address of No. 19 Charles Street, Westminster. Some have remarked on the irony of Sancho making a living from selling rum, sugar, and tobacco: all goods produced by slaves.

This page is written and maintained by Brycchan Carey. To find out more about me and my interests, visit my homepage. To find out more about my career, read my CV. To see a full index of this website, click here.

Whatever you choose to do, thank you for visiting this website and come back soon as it is regularly updated.

By the way, the title for this page is unashamedly borrowed from the title of an exhibition dedicated to Sancho which was held at the
National Portrait Gallery in London in 1997. It was a great exhibition!

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